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A random person commented on my last entry and inspired me to blog again. Well, that and I'm supposed to be editing my personal statement for residency apps and Im looking for a way to procrastinate. because watching 6 episodes of top chef masters in one sitting isn't enough.

I look back on this blog and it makes me a little sad that I didn't keep up in documenting the adventures of the past year. Throughout the year I would continually come up with ideas/thoughts i'd want to blog about but I never had the time or the focus to sit my ass down and put em down in typing.

Third year of medical school was... well, it was a bitch. I feel like it has aged me about 10 years inside. In dog years. On the outside maybe only 3 years. In dog years. *sigh*

For me it was definitely the toughest year of medical school. People talk about how terrible the first two years of med school are. How awesomer 3rd year is awesome because you're actually working and learning and helping people and doing the things you applied to med school for.

But third year made me appreciate how nice it was to be able to sit down with a nice cup of java and just do some peaceful relaxing book larnin. Getting to class at 9am every day now seems like a fond dream! You think lectures and studying ends once you hit the floors but then you spend 12 hours in the hospital, you sit (sleep) through 2 or more hours of conference every day and finally you're expected to study your butt off for a shelf exam at the end of the day. More often than not I would sit down at a cafe with a book to study and promptly fall asleep.

Second year you see all of your friends every day. You go to lecture and eat lunch with each other every day. You have the time to spend 1-3 hours a day turning into a ping pong master badass. Third year everyone is on a different schedule, people are always on call, you're usually working a weekend day and when you do go out everyone start yawning and falling asleep by 9pm.

The worst thing is having to stand at attention all of the time. Always having to wear a fake smile, no matter what. I just don't have the stamina. Sleep deprivation, hunger, listening to stupidity and the smell of diabetic foot all wear on my fake smile muscles, which fatigue to failure by about 11:30 am... 9am by the end of the year on peds.

It's not that I'm a grumpy person. I'm always a smiling, polite, easy going guy. But even when you're happy, it's the fact that you don't have a choice about it that wears you down. "hey we just got a call from the ER... would you like to see a new patient?"-- "Yeah of course! I'd love to!" I mean, who would want to go home and enjoy a sunny afternoon when there's a learning opportunity to be had. Who cares if we have a shelf exam coming up in 2 days. And residents/interns who like to keep you around, not to teach you, but just for company and conversation... ughhhhhh.

It's tough for me because I have a self deprecating humor. I like to joke about how lazy/stupid I am (it's a defensive mechanism designed to fish for compliments, i've realized). My whole sense of humor is based upon bitching. Or making tactless, tasteless jokes. But whining about being overworked and making jokes about large patients and talking shit about medschool douchebags in front of residents/attendings who write your evals can be perilous, to say the least.

So while I tend to be a favorite among med student teammates I find myself overly reserved and bland around superiors. They're forced to judge me not on my sparkling personality but on the basis of my apparent intelligence, which is directly proportional to my motivation, which has, unfortunately, been tremendously low.

...

Now that I think back on it though, as much as it felt like a year long experience at a bad dentist, as much as I bitch about it... when I think back upon my experiences over the past year I feel somewhat privileged to have gone through it. It's all a blur now but I have seen some pretty cool/scary/sad/neat shit. I've forgotten more than most people ever learn and acheived an understanding of medicine that relatively few people ever attain... even though that still amounts to about a 90% general incompetence on my part. And I'm going to be a doctor soon... that really scurrres me.

That being said you'd have to pay me about ten gazillion dollars to repeat 3rd year over again.

Ok, i was planning on writing more about something completely different but that sounds pretty conclusiony so i will just leave it at that. I'm a fourth year now (which is AWESOME) and so i will try to be better at updating this thing, starting with some thoughts ive had from over the past year. That or i will shut this damned thing down so that my general retardation doesn't jeopardize my residency apps lol.

peace out

yo

obviously i am a lousy bastard and the enthusiasm from the previous post regarding my calling failed to last. I am still doing internal medicine by default but currently entertaining about 10000 other options. I'm anxious-ridden about the whole thing but We'll see. My rank right now would probably be 1) IM, 2/3) EM/Rads 4) Derm 5) ENT

I fuckin dominated my surgery shelf (for once) and so since i'm horrible at everything else ENT has slipped ever so slightly back into the picture

On a lighter note, i thought i would share some comical videos me and some friends made.

The first one was filmed randomly one night a few saturdays ago. We were kind of randomly hanging out and my buddy busted out with his video camera and we picked out a song and made a music video out of it. It was actually a shit load of fun. We filmed in under an hour. Most of the hard work was done by my buddy who spent all of Sunday editing instead of studying for his shelf haha. I have to disclaim that I don't actually dance this shitty but it was my first time in front of a camera (very nerve racking) to tiny computer speaker sound and I was trying to keep from busting out laughing half the time.



We got such good feedback at school that we decided to make another one this weekend. This time my buddy went and made a green screen out of some colored paper lol. We were going professional so the north face sweater didn't make the cut this time :( Then we got some video-hoes (ie MSII's :) and had a hilarious time dancing in front of the green screen. I have to say usually when i see shit like this I think "DORKS". not that we aren't dorks, but it was really fun to make and especially watching the raw footage. I will say my moonwalk normally has more pop to it but it is kinda hard when you are afraid of falling into a fountain. Anyway here is the final release.



anyway bedtime, enjoy lol

blah

feeling shitty.

my best friend here just matched into a great chicago school. i would be happy for her except it means she isn't going to the great local school.

dammit

i don't know why it bothers me so much. probably bc i'm kind of in love with her. she's pretty awesome.

goddamn fucking chicago. i hate that fucking city. it's like where my dreams go to die.

I guess i didn't realize how much i cared about this person until I realized today she wouldn't be around next year. and that makes me sad

Because i hate third year. All of my friends have been on a different track and i rarely get to see them. And while I like a lot of the people i've worked with there are so many goddamn fucking douchebags on my track. I'm sick of the same annoying faces. I want to punch them in the face.

She kept me sane this year. We talked every day. I liked making her laugh. Hanging out with her was one of the few things I looked forward to. She made me not think about sad stuff from the past.

Med school can be so fucking depressing sometimes. You give up the best years of your life. You spend all day in the fucking hospital. You wear a fake smile on your face all of the time. It gets so goddamn tiring and lonely.

so when shit like this gets taken away from me it makes me really sad.

:/

blahahhhhhhhh

Excited

Okay. Long time no update. I have wanted to post many times and even composed posts in my head but I never found enough time to type anything up. Most of the time it would have just been bitching about stupid stuff.

Anyway I guess I'll have to save that shit for later. I do have some amusing stories from the past year of medical adventures.

But right now i'm excited because i just figured out what to do with my life! I decided a few hours ago I wanted to do internal medicine!

I have been thinking ENT/ophtho/medicine/ER/rads for the longest time now. I dropped ENT because I just realized that the biggest driving force for me was the prestige. They are definitely the cream of the crop and the surgeons i respect the most. Fucking awesome guys. Chairman is the coolest guy ever. But I realize the only thing pushing me was the prestige. Unlike my gunner ass counterpart surgeon-to-bes... I just don't really care for the OR, as much as I tried to force myself. Sure surgeries are cool... but I'd much rather fast forward the whole damn thing. I had a liver transplant on a Sunday and while my teammates were pissed they missed it, I was pissed I didn't get out until 4pm. I can't force myself to do that just in some vain attempt to surpass the ENT-ness of my cousin who is obviously smarter than me.

Ok this is getting way too fucking long to explain each excluded specialty... but long story short, I think when I first started medical school, I remember praying that I could survive, even if I was just in the bottom 10% of my class. And then one day we had our first practice anatomy exam and that's when I looked around and realized that half of MDs were dumbshits afterall... you didn't have to be a genius... just a masochist to get into this field. Gee go figure.

Ever since then it's been an ego trip to live up to my own expectations. To do a specialty with 'prestige', something to utilize my ridiculous board score.

Then today I swear to god something happened which I can't stop thinking about. My stroke rehab patient. Who came to me mostly comatose and stanky. Paralysized and shit and unable to do much more than utter "mmrraaagh". Over and over again. I've been working with her for a week now. Seeing her every morning, checking in on her, trying to get her to communicate in some form. Then at the rehab gym today where we were making rounds she looked at me, gave me this big-ass half-smile (other half is paralyzed) and she gave me a fuckin thumbs up sign. I couldn't believe it!!! I'd been trying to get her to do that to yes/no communicate with me for a week. I'd never gotten any signal she even recognized me. And here she fucking thumbs-ups me out of the blue. I wanted to hug her.

Fuck this shit man. I want to help people. I can't believe how happy that retarded mangled thumbs-up sign made me. I've forgotten why I went into medicine. Not to prove how smart I am but because I wanted to help out people like my family when they need it.

so i want to do heme-onc. I realized that I always tell people how depressing that shit seems. But in truth I've never been in a cancer clinic where I didn't find the patients to be charming as hell. It's kind of weird. And this way I get to deal with many people who didn't fuck themselves up via smoking/alcohol/big-mac disease.

In all fairness, I should disclose that I just read that heme-onc docs make a shitload of money. Hey we can't all be saints goddammit.

Anyway I can't believe how excited I am, it's irrational. Probably when I go back to the hospital tomorrow and get a whiff of someone's crotch-stank I will change my mind. But for now I will ride it and see how it goes. We'll see!

hi

sigh

worst day ever

fucking dumbshit ass patient

...

inconsiderate ass full-o-shit mfker i won't name because i don't want to get in trouble.

blah

fdsafdsa

man. my VAcation has turned from a chill 8-3 to an annoyingly busy 8-5. I dunno why patients keep coming in. we need to hide the signs or something. I am totally spoiled by the schedule here. Every minute after 3 hurts! I keep looking at the clock thinking wtf i'm still here?!?!..

primary care i think, is not for me. now i know why House always hated clinic duty... because it totally blows, that's why. outpatient cases are so boring. i want me some real medicine. getting sick of seeing obscure back pains we can't cure. Getting xrays or bloodwork and then handing off to specialists. or maybe i'm just bitter because i'm doing 4/5th the same job as our interns while there's a 110k differential in salary/tuition.

...

lately i've been trying to figure out if my former subi is hitting on me. we've been chatting it up a lot recently and she keeps insisting we NEED to go out for some drinks together. which doesn't compute because i'm a big dork and she's cute with a gargantuan rack. i keep thinking, it's a trap- grab an ax! i mean i can be a charming pig, but come on...

and oh yeah i guess i should mention she has a boyfriend. but they're practically married. well except for the long distance thing. but he is damn rich.

i guess it doesn't compute because i don't usually get that vibe when we're hanging out (not through these insecure and blind eyes anyway). and i know i don't give that vibe out because a) i'm a coward and b) i never really looked at her that way, well except when the eyeballs would wander cuz of the aforementioned goods.

so i'm honestly 95% sure she's not interested. which is good except for the 5% chance of a desperately needed ego boost. but i wouldn't want to fuck someone else over like that anyway. and i think we make pretty awesome just friends.

it is hard to find a good medschool friend who is totally on the same wavelength as you- similar smarts, cynicism, laziness and procrastination ability. she's my new 'smart' friend now that my man-crush step1 betting partner took a year off. it's great. we can totally blow off 3 hours talking shit about stupid/mean/ugly/douche classmates/interns/residents/attendings/patients. but it's obvious we both still really care about patients and gay shit like that.

it would never work out anyway, for a number of different reasons. besides i'm totally in love with my previous subi. i just need her to get back from her away rotation so that i can make my move. and by move i mean i plan to club her on the head and drag her into my cave.

...

fuck i keep coughing. i think i have TB. i will go through my records and execute all of my former patients if i ahve TB.

...

i really need to study. i really really need to study. i feel like everyone is getting smarter than me and it's pissing me off. this upcoming shelf exam is starting to scare me and this damned step up to medicine book is bigger than my step1 first aid review book.

what i need to do is stop looking up reading up on dumb shit like wrestling and mma fighting news.

but check out fedor snap like a cobra and maul the shit out of tim sylvia. what an f'n assassin. hands down the scariest and most badassed mfker on the planet. (ffd to 5:30 if you want just the action):

Fedor Emelianenko vs Tim Sylvia Affliction Banned sélectionné dans Sports et Extrême